Clean

I love reading. I have talked about my love of books a little bit on my blog, and one of my favorite genres is biblical fiction, which focuses on stories from Scripture. I especially love stories that center around some event or characters from the Old Testament. Recently, I finished The Crimson Cord by Jill Eileen Smith, a popular biblical fiction author. It is a tale following the prostitute Rahab from the book of Joshua. The characters were fantastic and the writing was absolutely beautiful. If you are looking for a good book, I would highly recommend it. It was one of the best Christian fiction books I’ve read in a really long time.

The thing that struck me the most as a I followed along with Rahab and her journey was how much it related to me. Her struggles became my struggles. Her thoughts and experiences connected with me. After Israel destroys the city of Jericho and keeps their promise to protect Rahab and her family, they allow her to go back to the camp with them. She becomes an Israelite. It was beyond awesome to see her try to understand the laws of Yahweh and Smith did a fantastic job portraying the confusion of a foreigner trying to grasp the holiness of Yahweh. Rahab begins to struggle with the sins of her past. She struggles to believe that a holy and just God could love and forgive someone like her. After her sins have been atoned for, she still felt dirty and unworthy.

As I was reading the fictional portrayal of Rahab, I became overwhelmed by the fact that I am Rahab. Maybe I have never been a prostitute, but I too have felt the heaviness, the dirtiness of my sins. I have been weighed down so low by the things of my past. My rags are scarlet.

“Come, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they should be white like wool.”–Isaiah 1:18

I will always be a sinner. I will always be unworthy of a holy God. I do not deserve to stand before him. BUT because of his Son, and only because of his Son, the perfect and unblemished Lamb, I have been declared righteous in his eyes. My dirty rags have been washed in the blood of the Lamb and have come out clean, whiter than snow! I am no longer Rahab, the prostitute and outsider, but now I am Rahab, a daughter of Yahweh, welcomed into the fold of God.

I don’t know what you are going through. I don’t know what experiences you have had in the past or the sins and temptations you are fighting against. I do know that Jesus can turn a prostitute into a princess. He can take the filthiest parts of you and make them clean. That is the power of the Gospel. If you are tired of living in Jericho, wretched and dirty, come to Jesus because he will make you clean.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us of from all unrighteousness. –1 John 1:9